Originally posted by ScottEmerson
There has been evidence that the Church actually removed instruments from the Church to separate it from other religions... They did so not from Biblical authority, but from trying to make it different from the pagan sects. The implication is that instruments were used in the early church, until around 395 A.D., when the Church was worried about its power - so it commanded the removal of the instruments from their worship services. This was a chain of decisions made by the Church to increase its power, instead of making decisions based upon Biblical evidence...
http://www.stevenestrella.com/composers/index.html?ancientmusic.html
There is little evidence that Ancient Romans contributed much to music history other than the development of brass instruments used in the military. The Romans conquered Greece in 146 B.C. and assimilated and adapted Greek music and religion. Writings of Cicero, Quintilian, and others document the use of music for purely entertainment purposes at large festivals with choruses and instrumental ensembles. The gradual decline of Rome after 200 A.D. took place as the popularity of Christianity was increasing. The emperor Constantine I, who ruled from 306 to 337 A.D., adopted Christianity and legalized it for the first time in the Roman empire. Rome had for centuries exerted a peaceful and unifying influence on Europe but that was gradually disintegrating as barbarians increasingly threatened the security of the empire. When the Roman empire was permanently divided in 395 A.D., Christianity became the only major cultural force unifying the still vital eastern empire in Byzantium with the rapidly dissolving western empire in Europe. By the time the last Roman emperor, the young Romulus Augustulus, was finally deposed in 476, the papacy had established itself in Rome and was asserting jurisdiction over the Christian church. The music of the Christian church was for centuries the only cultivated art music in existence in Europe. Early Christian music, largely monophonic chant influenced by the Jewish cantorial tradition, was entirely vocal as the church attempted to purge the masses of the instrumental music associated with competing religions. Latin translations by Boethius (circa 480-524) and Cassiodorus (circa 490-585) of Greek literature on music theory also contributed to the theoretical foundations of early Christian chant. It is from these origins that the history of western art music properly begins.
1st I would like to say that there is not a solitary mention of istrumental music in the worship of any NT church nor in any instance of Christian worship throughout the apostolic age. You do not see 1 command or example of musical instruments being used in worship in the bible. Let us draw our attention back to the word Psallo. The word Psallo has many different meaning depending on the time period it was used in. This same thing can be seen with other words. In one time period a word will mean one thing and in another time period it will mean another. This must be consisdered when looking at the definitions of words in Lexicons. Out of the following 17 Lexicons we can narrow the meaning of Psallo over time with 5 different definitions. Liddel and Scott, Robinson, Pickering, Groves, donnegan, Parkhurst, Dunbar, Bagster, M Wright, W.Green Field, Yonge, Contopoulos, Edward Maltbys greek Gradus, Hamilton, Thayer, Sophocles, Thomas Sheldon Green.
1. To pluck the hair
2. To twang the bowstring
3. To Twitch a carpeenters line
4. To touch the chords of a musical instrument, that is, to make instrumental music
5. To touch the chords of the human heart, that is, to sing, to celbrate with hymns of praise.
Here we have 5 distinct meaning of the word psallo from the different Lexicons. So what do we do? Do we just grab which meaning we want and apply it to the NT time. We can see that psallo at one time meant to pluck the hair. So does that mean that when we assemble together that we could do like Nehemiah Nem 13:25 and pluck off each others hair as a part of our worship? If not why not? Again if we take 2 and 3 does this mean we can twang the bowstring and twitch the carpeenters line in worship today? This is why it is very important to find out what a word meant during a certain time. We need to look at what the word psallo meant during the NT time. Please note the following time line of different periods of language uses as described by Sophocles in his lexicon.
1. The Mythical Period, the time prior to Homer
2. The ionic Period, from Homer to BC 500.
3. The attic Period, form BC 500 to BC 283
4.The Alexandrain Period, from BC 283 to BC 146
5. The Roman Peroid, fro BC 146 to AD 330
6 The Byzantine Period, form AD. 330 to 1453.
Other Scolars vary slightly from Sophocles both as to number and exact time periods but they all come to the same conculsions. The meanings of word differ in these different time periods. The question becomes what did the word Psallo mean during the NT time?
The Greek lexicon of Sophocles, himself a native Greek and for thirty-eight years Professor of the Greek Language in Havard University, covers all of the Roman period oand the Byzantine period down to the end of the 11 century, in all more than 1200 years history of the language from BC 146 to AD 1100. As the basis of his monumental work, this profound and tireless schoar examined 146 secular and 77 ecclesiastical authors of the Roman period, and 109 secular and 262 ecclesiastical, modern Greek, and scholastic authors of the Byzantine period, a grand total of 594 authors and convering a perod of more thatn 1200 years and he decllares that
there is not a single example of psallo throughout this long period of time involving or implying the use of an instrument, but says that it meant always and everywhere "to chant, sing, religious hymns.
Thayer express this same idea when it came to the NT time. He says in the New Testament to sing a hymn, to celebrate the praises of God in song.
Even though there many meaning to the word psallo we can see that from these 2 scholars especially from Sophocles who was devoted exclusivly to the Roman and Byzantine periods that the word Psallo did not have the meaning of using a musical instrument.
To Sum it up, in its primary sense psallo had no reference to music at all, but meant mearly to touch or twitch or pull, then it was used to denote the drawing of a bowstring in shooting arrows, afterwards it was restricticted to making music on a harp by touching its strings, then it was applied to singing with the accompaniment of harp music, finally it was used to denote singing psalms without any instrument save the organs of speech. In this last use it is used exclusively in the NT.
You seem to think your post implies they use musical instruments in the early church well if this is true than all the following have completly missed that evidence.
Dr Frederic Louis Ritter.
He states that the 1st century Christians were pureley vocal. He also says as late as the 4th century, St Hieronymus says, speaking of the degraded state of roman spectacles, "A Christian maid should not know what a lyre or flute is, nor what ther use is.
Edward Dickinson Professor of the History of Music says.
Many of the fathers speaking of religeous song, make no mention of instruments, others like Clement of Alexadrial and St chrysostom, refer to them only to denounce them. Clement says "Only one instrument do we use, the word of peace whee with we honor God no longer the old psaltery, trumpet, drum, and flute. Chrysostom exclaims: "David formerly sand in psalms, also we sing today with him, he had the lyre with lifeless strings, the chruch has a lyre with living strings. Our songues are the strings of the lyre, with a different tone, indeed, but with a more accordant piety."
Frank Landon Humphreys author of the evolution of church music says: All the music employed in their early services was vocal, and the rhythmic element and all gesticulation were forbidden.
The American Cyclopidian, Schaff- Herzog Encyclopedia, and the New International Encyclopedia all claim that musical instruments were first introduced under Pope Vitalian about 670AD. They say that in the Greek Church the organ never came into use. But after the 8th century it became more common in the Latin Church but with oppositon form the side of the monks.
McClintock and Strongs Cyclopedia:
The Eastern church has never been any other than vocal, instrumental music being unknown in that church, as it was in the primitive church.
Chambers Encyclopedia, A concise Cyclopeia of Religious Knowledge, Johnsons Universal Cyclopedia and Fessendens Encyclopedia.
All of these echo the same thing that musical instrments were not introduced until the 6th centurey and that the early primitive church sang they did not play.
I could list at least 25 more sources that say the same thing but I think this is enough to show that the early church did not use musical instruments but sang with their voice. This goes right along with what the bible says and shows us as an example to follow.
The simple answer is, the CoC allows for "aids" because their false doctrines had them painting theirselves into a corner. Of course, only the CoC is authorized to define "what is an aid, and what is NOT an aid". The Baptists have no authority in this area!
